Mother Nature Does Nuclear Power

wjwlsn writes "Back in the day (2 billion years ago), even before the time of iron men and wooden reactors, Mother Nature had mastered nuclear power. She built a passively safe system at Oklo that had fully automatic control and built-in waste containment, and operated it safely for about 150 million years. Now researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have deduced the operational characteristics by examining the isotopic composition of xenon contained in rock samples taken from the reactor site. More details at Eurekalert."

Comments

Time spans

[Richard_at_work]

Humans really do not have an adequet grasp of timespans when it comes to geology or similiar such things. This happened over 150million years, didnt cause the end of the world, and life went on around it, whereas today we cant run powerstations without people declaring that they will bring about the end of hte human race, anything that comes within a hundred miles will die of radiation poisoning. This shows that the world can cope with nuclear waste, and it can cope pretty damn well. But then the world has always had to deal with bigger issues than anything humanity can throw at it anytime soon.

We have been around for 50,000 years, give or take. The earth has been around for 4billion years. Give nature some credit.

Re:Time spans

[Baron_Yam]

To quote George Carlin, "The world isn't going anywhere... we are!"

Just because it's unlikely we'll screw up the environment enough to sterilize the planet doesn't mean there isn't a significant chance we'll screw it up enough it kill off humanity.

Re:Time spans

[jfengel]

This is true. But the existence of a safe nuclear reactor doesn't mean that any particular power plant is safe. The plants currently in existence are run by people, are located within tens of miles of human homes, and are vastly complicated pieces of machinery. When they're done they leave radioactive bits lying around; even self-contained they're potentially dangerous for thousands of years.

You're right: if somebody were to mimic nature's design by building a totally safe and self-contained a bunch of know-nothing, knee-jerk environmentalists would protest against it anyway. But that doesn't imply that the same know-nothing, knee-jerk environmentalists are wrong to protest current designs.

The Oklo reactor has a number of design advantages (as it were) over ours. For one thing it doesn't actually have to generate any power, so it can run at an arbitrarily low level and far away from anybody who might care what it does. For another it didn't have to cope with the possibility of somebody attempting to steal its fuels or attempting to destroy it hoping to cause injury.

For a third, it didn't consider the possibility that its waste products would be a danger to anybody walking by. Our waste products must not only be sealed, but potentially people may even forget where they are, and warnings must be placed for thousands of years.

I don't think that these problems are insoluble. I believe safe reactors can be built, the risks reduced to acceptable levels. There will be those who don't understand, and I get frustrated at them, too. But neither will I pretend that nuclear power is totally safe, especially in its present implementation. Those opposed to nuclear power are not completely off base, and it's wise to listen to the smart ones. As for the stupid ones... well, there are stupid people on every side of every argument.

Big difference in agenda

[foniksonik]

In nature the reaction may have been a long term sustained process...

We humans on the other hand want to extract energy from the reaction... which seems to be the big difference here...

Sure you can have a sustained reaction but can you DO anything with it? Our goal has been to use it as a super steam engine that drives a generator to create electricity. Nature has no such objective...

Re:That brings back memories.

[gstoddart]

It's not wrong to wistfully remember chemistry texts is it?

As long as its for the actual chemistry and not some creepy wierd fetish that's OK.

Otherwise, no.

=)